Friday, 14 March 2014 06:52
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Britain has vowed to support a strong resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council that will call for an international investigation into alleged abuses by both sides during the conflict.
“The time has now come for international action on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the House of Commons yesterday.
The Foreign Secretary said that the draft resolution on Sri Lanka that was jointly tabled by the US, UK, Mauritius, Macedonia and Montenegro last week had called for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to lead the investigation and report back by March 2015.
Hague said Britain welcomed the offer of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to assist in an international investigation, which would be a significant step forward in ensuring that the Sri Lankan people will know the truth behind events during the conflict.
“We are confident that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, together with Special Procedures, can provide a full and comprehensive investigation,” he told the House of Commons.
Hague said further discussions on the text of the draft resolution on Sri Lanka would continue this month at the UNHRC.
He warned however that the adoption of the resolution on Sri Lanka was not a foregone conclusion. “Ahead of the vote, the Prime Minister and I, and other Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers, have been in contact with a wide range of UN HRC member states to encourage them to support a strong resolution that calls for an international investigation,” Hague explained.
The Foreign Secretary said that in lobbying support for the resolution, the British Government had drawn attention to the assessment of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who points to the need for this investigation, as progress on accountability in Sri Lanka has been, in her words, “limited and piecemeal”.
In his update to the British Parliament, Hague said that between the Commonwealth Summit in November last year the UK had been pressing the Sri Lankan Government to launch a credible domestic process to investigate allegations and ensure accountability. “However no credible domestic accountability processes have been set up in Sri Lanka to date,” the British Government official added.
